I like to play as the bad guy. Does anyone else do this?

Post Reply New Topic

Is there anyone here who lets out their inner psychopath in video games? And I'm referring to single player, so griefing doesn't count.

makes sense.

nice guys finish last, after all.

Sometimes. I mostly enjoy playing as evil ladies over evil gents.

In Fallout 3 I made an evil female character named "Angel" who lived in Tenpenny Tower and wore beautiful pre-war dresses and had blonde 1950's hair and blue eyes. She was a ruthless psycho wasteland criminal who would murder or enslave anybody for money and she was a cannibal who liked to eat her victims. She was also quite the seductress.

Meh, good or evil kinda just stepped out of the door for me, especially considering how I kicked out Fallout New Vegas in my favorites in light of Planescape, but that's a more storybook type of game.

I guess the reason why I took it out wasn't exactly because of the karma, but because like in today's world, good and evil just seem to be paradigms to help define who's right and wrong. An alternative to Fallout would probably have to be the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise, particularly Shadow of Chernobyl, since it elevated me to a new level of thinking and made me realize that good and evil in fiction may turn out to be overplayed.

I think anything done with the intention of hurting somebody else, like somebody who is not a threat to you, is true evil. Especially when you feel no guilt or shame over it. That's my view on the world.

I've done this a couple of times. The most "evil" character I've played is a khajiit in Skyrim based on my cat where the goal is to kill as many npc's as possible. Because Tali is a ferocious kitten.
Oddly enough that's easier for me to do than an evil run of Mass Effect or something.

A little off-topic, but I played the role of Gauleiter Hans Zeller in a high-school production of The Sound of Music.

I was the only actor that was boo'ed at the curtain call.

It was a most glorious moment!

As exhilirating as it can be to rampage around as a "Some men just want to watch the world burn"-type psycho, it's also interesting to play as a Noble Demon/Pragmatic Villain.

but above all, i play female characters when i have the chance UwU

A little off-topic, but I played the role of Gauleiter Hans Zeller in a high-school production of The Sound of Music.

I was the only actor that was boo'ed at the curtain call.

It was a most glorious moment!

I have to distance the character from myself in some notable way, because I tend to get too empathic. Not that it can sometimes be too easy to accidentally become a psychopath who kills everyone without feeling anything. The realization had kind of been part of a game of Skyrim I was playing recently, where I use some realism mods and put some limitations that I will never rob tombs, and keep looting of humanoid corpses to a minimum along with stealing, to recontextualize how a lot of games I thought I played the hero I was doing some morally questionable things. That game mechanics can make me kind of be the bad guy in ways.

Doesn't mean I don't like to occasionally try things on bad guy side. I had set up a couple of D&D campaigns where I wanted people to kind of play as the sort of monsters that are the bad guys, and go after bad guy things. I do find myself fascinated by the role of bad guys that monsters may have, a while back I even went through the D&D lore, where along with my knowledge of economics, I tried to put into context what economics could mean for varied races, including the monsters. Because people have funny things in thinking of economics as one thing, but with a little knowledge I could suss out depth. A friend also started a D&D pirate game, where it seems in the group I was the only one who went in with an evil aligned character (who cares mostly about money), and yet I was one of the ones not arrested because I did not decide to openly attack the law while outnumbered.

I have sure played some renegade characters, such as mean female commander Shepard, but it can still feel a bit hard when it is so in the face of choosing bad/mean choices. So there are either games where you are kind of playing the bad guy anyway, but the game humanizes it, so you can feel vindicated to be bad. Or to play on the evil side on a more player choice sort of thing, I have to justify it. Like letting it all loose as the Joker who thinks the world is crazy, in Fallout 4. Or a Khajiit assassin in Skyrim, who is fiercely loyal to the empire. Playing as a necromancer with a specific look in life in Skyrim, or a devoted to the Daedra Dark Elf in Skyrim. Letting out some dark side can be fun, but for me I think there has to be more complexity to a character rather than just say I am a bad guy, so I am going out of my way to kill anyone and everyone. I have had it in the back of my mind to some time play a racist Nord, for a different perspective, but I know for me it will be tough to get it right.

Maybe I don't fully belong in the parameters of the topic, because I often think that people are better than to really just be evil for the hell of it. There has to be a reason for it, and the true evil is something has really gone too far down the rabbit hole that I think can really be done in a game.

But kind of related, it is something I have been quite enjoying in recently playing Red Dead Redemption 2, because despite the fact I have been trying really hard to get good karma in the game, the white bar being full is one goal I have set myself, the game is really good at tempting me. The game rewards looting the dead, but trying to do it total innocents is kind of told to me that it is sort of a bad thing to do. And staying too long around the dead can often land me in trouble for something I might have even been the good guy in, because how would a random onlooker not know that I saved some innocent person, so to not get penalized, I might have to stop the otherwise innocent witness, which likely will have me doing something wrong. The game has given me good explanations of why my character is an outlaw, having me think how I have to act as one for my own good, what I have to say to live with those decisions, and then face that I still did something bad.

It is fascinating being the bad guy, if I can have a compelling reason why I am being such. Letting loose can be one aspect, but to me I can't be a lazy writer for characterization of the decisions made by me the player. And then there is beating people as Peach in Smash.

Try Arcanum playing as the bad guy. I felt really bad when I had to slaughter all the innocent people in Stillwater.

When I was a child I thought it'd be cool to be Doctor Robotnik and design powerful robots powered by the chaos emeralds

Now that I'm a feeble 30-year-old man I feel bad for just bad-mouthing fictional characters

e: It's funny when games cast you as a bad guy but attempt to soften it as much as possible. Like how, in Hitman, you play as an assassin... except that every single target just happens to be the most evil person possible. Like they're all extremely rich paedophiles getting kids hooked on heroin and also they're working for an evil globalist alliance etc etc and it's like, come on. At least once ask me to murder someone who simply upset the wrong person. Actually, this reminds me the old Armored Core games. You're basically a mercenary working for corporations and the earlier missions are just like, kill these striking workers because that's the mission. Morality doesn't even come into it and I think that's interesting and what could potentially make Hitman interesting if they leaned into it. Making the player do something they're uncomfortable with or, even worse, making the player feel comfortable doing something bad. I guess it's a thin line between that and glorification though

No I don’t. The same moral that guide me in life guides me in games. I’ve had to shoot a npc who drew in me and then stand there shocked for a bit. Unfortunately self defend in read dead is treated like murder.

I actually am not too fond of red dead 2 as it makes you do bad things as part of the story, my authur was a good as a man as he could be given that issue.